L’École pour tous (2006) - film review

Jahwad, 30, is the black sheep of his family.  Having failed his baccalaureate, he turned to a career in crime, and is now on the run from the police.  One day, he is given a golden opportunity to go back to high school – not as a pupil, but as a teacher...

The plot is hardly original.  A maverick young teacher enters a classroom of wolves from a socially deprived area and not only survives being eaten alive but also somehow succeeds in winning their respect.  Glenn Ford got there first with Blackboard Jungle (1955).  Sidney Poitier followed suit To Sir, With Love (1967).  Coluche did it in Le Maître d'école (1981), as did Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver (1988) (the best of the bunch).  Even Gerard Depardieu got in on the act in Le Plus beau métier du monde (1996).  Now, in L’école pour tous, it’s the turn of Gad Elmaleh’s little brother Arié, and the impression of déja vu is so overwhelming that you want to run out into the street and scream: Enough!

Despite a brave stab at it, Eric Rochant fails to bring much in the way of originality to this now hackneyed-to-death scenario, and ennui sets in from the very first scene.  The jokes are few and far between, if not rare to the point of being an endangered species.  The fact that every character in the film is a walking caricature prompts you to wonder whether Rochant ever set foot in a state school.   Can this really be the same Eric Rochant who brought us such watchable treats as Un monde sans pitié (1989) and Aux yeux du monde (1990)?

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